


Mirrors are Liars, Armour Twice So

by afterandalasia



Series: Femslash February 2014 [9]
Category: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
Genre: Action & Romance, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Canon Era, Coda, Community: disney_kink, Crossdressing, F/F, Female Phoebus de Chateaupers, Femslash February, Lesbian Esmeralda, Major Character Injury, Villain Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 10:10:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2384519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterandalasia/pseuds/afterandalasia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phoebus de Chateaupers died in the River Seine. It was particularly impressive considering he had never been born at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirrors are Liars, Armour Twice So

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Floranna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Floranna/gifts).



> From the great [prompt](http://disney-kink.livejournal.com/9516.html?thread=6121004#t6206508) on Disney Kink, asking for a female Phoebus who has been hiding being a woman, and a lesbian Esmeralda who is actually pretty relieved to find out!
> 
> Since this was prompted for Femslash February, I'm tagging it as such, even if it has taken me an embarrassing length of time to actually write and post the blasted thing.

Phoebus de Chateaupers died in the River Seine. It was particularly impressive considering he had never been born at all.  
  
People saw armour, and a sword, and heard a rough determined voice, and thought: _man_. And the girl Phoebe who grew to live as the man Phoebus never thought to disabuse them of such a fact. She would rather be thought a man and be respected for carrying a sword, than be a woman and be mocked for it.  
  
When she hit the water, the world went black. The next thing that she knew, she had been flung over someone's leg and her back was being slapped, and she coughed and retched and vomited water until the world span and she wondered whether death might have been more merciful anyway.  
  
She put her hands beneath her and tried to push herself upright. Her limbs ached, but still burned with fear, the memories of the soldiers and arrows and fleeing. They cannot catch her here.  
  
"It's all right," someone said. Phoebe looked round, hair in her eyes, to see the face of the gypsy girl Esmeralda. "They're gone."  
  
Strength failing her, Phoebe slumped to the ground again, just about managing to roll onto her back. Her left shoulder felt like she was in the house still. Slowly it dawned that she was not wearing her armour, that her soaked linen shirt did nothing to hide the bandages binding her chest, and she looked to Esmeralda with terror rushing cold and no words coming to her tongue to excuse her.  
  
"We'll get you somewhere safe," Esmeralda continued, as if she had not even noticed. She was soaked as well, muddy, her clothes stuck to her skin. Phoebe wished that she didn't notice how _beautiful_ the woman was even at a time like this. "I have called for some of my friends."  
  
"Why did you save me?" she rasped, throat raw. Even speaking hurt, and Phoebe grimaced.  
  
Esmeralda wrung water out of her hair, and pulled out her scarf to squeeze the water from that as well. "I would see no-one drown. Save perhaps judge Frollo."  
  
Even the slightest laughter cramped her chest and shoulder, but Pheobe laughed anyway.  
  
"But you most of all," she continued. It was dark in the shelter of the bridge, and her shirt and eyes and teeth all seemed very bright. How much time had passed, Pheobe did not know, but the flames above must have mostly died down for it to be this dark. "You saved those people. Risked your life for it."  
  
"Four of them, one of me," she tried to shrug, and only her right shoulder obeyed. "It seemed like a fair trade."  
  
Esmeralda gave a smile that said far more than Phoebe felt ready to face. They sat in silence for a while, and Esmeralda tied up her hair again before reaching over to look at the wound on Phoebus's shoulder. The broken shaft of an arrow still protruded from her skin.  
  
"It broke when I removed your armour," she said. "That's at the bottom of the Seine, I'm afraid."  
  
"It was gaudy anyway."  
  
She did not have the strength to really talk, to do anything other than quip and deflect words away. Her head fell back against the mud, and a violent shiver ran through her. Esmeralda rose to her feet, and for a terrible moment Phoebe thought that she was to be left here, but a moment later the girl was back with a bundle in her hands, a cloak which she spread over Phoebe.  
  
"I was going to keep it dry," said Esmeralda, with a ghost of a smile. "But I think you need it more than I do."  
  
The pain was growing on her now, coming in waves that didn't even have the good grace to start in her shoulder but struck her everywhere at once. Despite it all, she might have drifted in and out of consciousness, in the dark and the quiet with Esmeralda keeping a vigil over her.  
  
Another man arrived, tall and dark-skinned and quiet, and put Pheobe's good arm over his shoulder to haul her to her feet. Wrapped in the cloak, it might have been harder to see her bound chest, but a stab of fear still bolted through her.  
  
"Come," said Esmeralda. "I think I know where we can go."  
  
  
  
  
  
To tell the truth, Phoebe would rather have been further from Claude Frollo, not so near as to be hidden in Notre Dame herself. But she had no choice with the wound to her shoulder and the exhaustion turning her limbs to lead.

Quasimodo ushered them to a small corner, a couple of blankets that felt like heaven compared to mud and stones, and Phoebe felt herself slowly begin to dry.  
  
Not that it did anything to decrease the pain when Esmeralda pushed the arrow the rest of the way through her shoulder, or poured wine over the wound to try to keep it clean.  
  
"I was worried, you know," said Esmeralda, helping Phoebe to drink a little water.  
  
"I promise that I'm normally a better swimmer."  
  
It makes Esmeralda roll her eyes, but smile all the same. Probably a mercy, considering how much Phoebe struggles to hold her tongue.  
  
"I _meant_ ," she replied pointedly, "before I knew. I've... had to fend off the attentions of more than a few men over the years."  
  
"I can imagine," said Phoebe softly. That, at least, is not meant to pass for wit.  
  
Esmeralda pushes some damp hair off Phoebe's forehead. "I saw the way that you looked at me. When I danced."  
  
"It felt like you were dancing for me."  
  
"Many men say that." Her lips quirked. "But fewer women, I must admit. I was preparing to turn you down, like I have the others."  
  
"And now?"  
  
Taking hold of Phoebe's hands, Esmeralda ran one thumb over the rough, scarred knuckles, then raised it to press a kiss to her fingertips. It made Phoebe want to shiver, or at least would have done if her shoulder did not seem to be turning energy into pain.  
  
"Now I wish only for you to be well."  
  
  
  
  
  
Phoebe was arrested as a member of the Court of Miracles. Recognition flashed in Frollo's eyes, but not a word passed his lips; perhaps he did not want to admit that a woman could be his Captain and him never have a clue. It is that thought which boldened Phoebe, and fear for Esmeralda which gave her strength.  
  
She was imprisoned with the Romani women. They were strong as well, with fire in their eyes, and Pheobe immediately decided that she likes them more than the sort of women that her parents - before their deaths - had expected her to become.  
  
"We will escape," she told them in undertones, "and we will save her."  
  
The Romani women sang that night, in their own tongue, and if the men could hear then they must have been able to understand even if they cannot reply. When the guards told them to quieten down, it was only for the noise they made, not the message that they sent.  
  
If it had been Phoebus who went to the Court of Miracles, perhaps it would have been different. Perhaps he would have been put in his own cell, separated from the others, and perhaps the guards the next day would not have so completely forgotten him when Quasimodo leapt down from the sky like some avenging angel. After all, a woman, even one who is tall and broad in the shoulder and wears hose like a man, was not worthy of the caution that their Captain of the Guard would be.  
  
A snatched sword, a shattered lock, and they spill forth. The people of Paris were already on the verge of ignition, ordinary people outraged by Frollo's cruelty and those Romani who had not been in the Court of Miracles nursing more reason to hate him than Phoebe could ever understand.  
  
The heat of the molten lead forced her back from the doorway, cursing and coughing in the thick air. She ripped the sleeve from her tunic to wrap around her face, and climbed atop the shattered masonry to find a path above the liquid fire.  
  
There were so many steps to the tower, but she took them at a run, ripping away her makeshift mask to pant for breath. Her shoulder burnt and throbbed, but she had faced worse, taken wounds on the battlefield that were not half so tenderly cared for. Tightening her grip on the hilt of her stolen sword, she ran on.  
  
She was half-way up when she heard the falling scream.  
  
Bile rising in her throat, Phoebe broke through the nearest door and ran to the edge of the gallery, all but throwing herself against the stone balustrade in fear that it might be... no, she cannot even think the words.  
  
She barely had time to register the judge's robes on the fallen figure when she heard another cry above, and looked to see Quasimodo above, hanging limply. Before she could run for the stairs again, he fell, and Esmeralda's scream rang from the sky as Quasimodo dropped, dropped...

Summoning every ounce that she had left, Phoebus snatched Quasimodo from the air as he fell before her. She was dragged against the stone again, breath forced from her lungs, and the tearing in her shoulder bought tears to her eyes, but she hauled him back over again and they fell to the floor both together.  
  
A relieved laugh burst from her lips, and she slapped Quasimodo on the shoulder. "Can't get away that easily," she said.  
  
Quasimodo looked round at her in something close to bewilderment. "Phoebus?" he said.  
  
The fighting outside was already dying down. God only knew that the guards had litte enough reason to take Frollo's orders when he was alive. Half of those put to torture had hated the thought. The rest were probably dead, or running like cowards from the battlefield. But somehow, Phoebe doubted that there was all that much room for her among their ranks again.  
  
"Not quite," she said.  
  
Then the door opened, and Esmeralda reappeared, and for the first time since the Feast of Fools the world righted itself once again.  
  
  
  
  
  
Quasimodo placed their hands together, and Phoebe clasped his arm for it in the manner that any man would. Some traits were slow to vanish.  
  
The people cheered for them both, and for their liberation. They cheered for Quasimodo too, as he stood still blinking and overwhelmed that people could lose their fear.  
  
Emerging from the crowd, Clopin swept up Esmeralda from the ground, so tight was his embrace. He was bloody and bruised, but grinning, a knife stuck through his belt. He eyed Phoebe critically, then nodded and clapped her on the shoulder with astonishing strength for a man so thin.  
  
"Not bad," he said, and lingered for just long enough that Phoebe raised one eyebrow. "For a soldier."  
  
She laughed. "Not bad yourself," she replied. "For a man."  
  
Clopin laughed, then snatched a fallen hat from the ground to fling into the air with a whoop. His infectious power spread out over the people again, and ragged cheering became more hearty, someone found a pipe to play, and celebration began to break through fear as the sun broke through the night to fill the world with sunlight around them.  
  
  
  
  
  
When Esmeralda looked pointedly at her shoulder, Phoebe rolled her eyes. "Last time that I checked, it was my lips that I used to kiss," she said.  
  
Later, much later, as they lay abed in the de Chateaupers estates and Esmeralda ran her fingers gently over the bandage, Phoebe considered how little, it turned out, she used her shoulder for at all.  
  
"I know there is travel in your blood," she said, resting her cheek against Esmeralda's brow. "But do you think that you could bear, one day, to live in one place?"  
  
Esmeralda rolled onto her front, draping one arm across Phoebe's chest, and smiled. "There is adventure in my blood," she replied. "Provide me that, and I will live wheresoever you wish."  
  
"I can work on that."


End file.
